Bike Around the World, from Home: CycleOps VirtualTraining Review

a woman is riding an indoor bike. — (Image credit: Jeremy Lips / Live Science)

It's possible to cycle in Manhattan along the banks of the Hudson River, or down a California highway that trails the Pacific coastline, without ever leaving your house, thanks to a new cycling system.

Indoor cycling systems have been around awhile, and are often used by professional cyclists for training, but the VirtualTraining softwaresystem from CycleOps has added features that aim to make cycling in the living room appealing to people who'd like to ride a bike just for the fun of it.

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By connecting the indoor cycling trainer to a tablet or a computer, and subscribing to the company's VirtualTraining software (for $5.99 to $15 per month), you can go online and select and download hundreds of routes from around the world. As you ride, Google Earth data shows where you are on the course, and on a side bar the system displays your cycling speed, distance taken, ride time, heart rate (if paired with a heart rate monitor) and the slope of the route.

To set up the virtual cycling system, I had to mount my own bike onto the trainer. The trainer essentially converts a regular bike into a stationary bicycle, and is designed to make it feel as though you are riding on the ground, as opposed to spinning wheels in the air.I used a trainer called Fluid2, which costs $350 and comes mostly assembled. It still needs minor work — such as attaching handles to their places — before you can slide the bike into the trainer.

Next, for the trainer to communicate with the software, I used zip ties to attach a speed and cadence Sensor called PowerTap to a spot near the wheel on the bike. The software then calculates your cycling speed by using a spinning, small magnet that you attach to one of the spokes inside the wheel. The cadence sensor is mounted on the bike near the pedals. These sensors wirelessly send the data to the VirtualTraining software on the computer, via Bluetooth.

Once you're signed into the VirtualTraining software, you can choose a route from the online database and download it to your computer and begin cycling. You can select a partner, choose to race with another user, or just train on your own. Real-time information about your speed and power (that is, the amount of power you are generating) is shown on the computer screen. A view of the Google map shows your progress on the road, and you can toggle the view with video of the road. (I connected the computer to a TV, to have a larger view of the map and the road footage.)

I enjoyed my experience with indoor cycling and the VirtualTraining software, especially when riding on routes that had video footage available. Having the option to actually look at a road made indoor cycling much more interesting than having to stare at a wall, and I was more motivated to push through and finish a route. Also, if you are a competitive person, the ability to race with other users or to compare your stats with those of your friends makes indoor cycling more fun.

Bahar Gholipour is a staff reporter for Live Science covering neuroscience, odd medical cases and all things health. She holds a Master of Science degree in neuroscience from the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris, and has done graduate-level work in science journalism at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She has worked as a research assistant at the Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives at ENS.